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We've established that Dan Davis, the director of Ford Racing Technology, wants to launch a spec racing series featuring turn-key 550-hp Ford Mustangs purchased straight from the manufacturer. But he's well aware of an even more compelling possibility waiting in the wings.

Everyone now knows that Chevrolet is reviving the Camaro and Dodge the Challenger. If you're like us, at some point you expect to see these three pony cars competing on a racetrack. Davis thinks the series he wants to launch as Mustang only would be the natural place.

If this sounds a lot like the original Trans-Am -- well, that's the idea. Launched in 1966, the SCCA Trans-Am series featured Mustangs and Plymouth Barracudas and Camaros and Challengers, all -- like the FR500GT -- built from real cars, not the complex and pricey from-scratch tube-frame cars of recent years. If Chevy and Dodge would be willing to build cars comparable to the FR500GT, then bring 'em on, Davis says.

That said, the Sports Car Club of America Trans-Am, given up for dead in 2005, is still hanging on through a well-intentioned token effort. In September and October of this year, the SCCA conducted two Trans-Am races at Heartland Park Topeka with a pickup field of leftover cars. Why? Mostly because Trans-Am is the longest continually running road-racing series in North America, and the two-race season allows it a 41st consecutive year.

Champ Car co-owner Paul Gentilozzi was a four-time Trans-Am champion, and he promoted the series until 2005. Gentilozzi won the first of the two Heartland Park races in his fresh-from-mothballs Rocketsports Jaguar XKR, but he recognizes that it would take a concerted, well-financed effort to return Trans-Am, or a series like it, to prominence. "I kept it going as long as I could," Gentilozzi says, "but it'll take someone with deeper pockets than mine."